György Ligeti

György Sándor Ligeti (born May 28, 1923) is a Hungarian composer (now living in, and a citizen of, Austria), widely seen as one of the great composers of instrumental music of the 20th century. Many of his works are well known in classical music circles, but among the general public, he is probably best known for the various pieces which feature prominently in the Stanley Kubrick films ', The Shining, and Eyes Wide Shut.

Ligeti's music

Ligeti's earliest works are an extension of the musical language of his countryman Béla Bartók. The piano pieces, Musica Ricercata (1951-53), for example, are often compared to Bartók's set of piano works, Mikrokosmos. Ligeti's set comprises eleven pieces in all. The first uses almost exclusively just one pitch class, A, heard in multiple octaves. Only at the very end of the piece is a second note, D, heard. The second piece then adds a third note to these two, the third piece adds a fourth note, and so on, so that in the eleventh piece, all twelve notes of the chromatic scale are present.

Related Topics:
Béla Bartók - Piano - Mikrokosmos - Octave - Chromatic scale

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Already at this early stage in his career, Ligeti was affected by the communist regime in Hungary at that time. The tenth piece of Musica Ricercata was banned by the authorities on account of it being "decadent". It seems that it was thus branded owing to its liberal use of minor second intervals. Given the far more radical direction that Ligeti was looking to take his music in, it is hardly surprising that he felt the need to leave Hungary.

Related Topics:
Communist - Interval

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Upon arriving in Cologne, he began to write electronic music alongside Karlheinz Stockhausen. He produced only three works in this medium, however, including Glissandi (1957) and Artikulation (1958), before returning to instrumental work. His music appears to have been subsequently influenced by his electronic experiments, and many of the sounds he created resembled electronic textures. Apparitions (1958-59) was the first work which brought him to critical attention, but it is his next work, Atmosphères, which is better known today. It was used, along with excerpts from Lux Aeterna and Requiem, in the soundtrack to Kubrick's '; in fact, the music was used without Ligeti's permission.

Related Topics:
Cologne - Karlheinz Stockhausen - Kubrick's

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Atmosphères (1961) is written for large orchestra. It is seen as a key piece in Ligeti's output, laying out many of the concerns he would explore through the 1960s. It virtually completely abandons melody, harmony and rhythm, instead concentrating purely on the timbre of the sound produced, a technique known as sound mass. It opens with what must be one of the largest cluster chords ever written - every note in the chromatic scale over a range of five octaves is played at once. The piece seems to grow out of this initial massive, but very quiet, chord, with the textures always changing.

Related Topics:
Orchestra - 1960 - Melody - Harmony - Rhythm - Timbre - Sound mass - Cluster chord - Chromatic scale - Chord

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Ligeti coined the term "micropolyphony" for the compositional technique used in Atmosphères, Apparitions and his other works of the time. He explained micropolyphony as follows: "The complex polyphony of the individual parts is embodied in a harmonic-musical flow, in which the harmonies do not change suddenly, but merge into one another; one clearly discernible interval combination is gradually blurred, and from this cloudiness it is possible to discern a new interval combination taking shape."

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From the 1970s, Ligeti returned to some extent to a more melodic style, and also began to concentrate on rhythm. Pieces such as Continuum (1970), Clocks and Clouds (1972-3), were written before he heard the music of Steve Reich and Terry Riley in 1972, yet the second of his Three Pieces for Two Pianos, "Self-portrait with Reich and Riley (and Chopin in the background)," commemorates this affirmation and influence. He also became interested in the rhythmic aspects of African music, specifically that of the Pygmies. In the mid-'70s he wrote his first opera, Le Grande Macabre, a work of absurd theatre with many eschatological references. His music of the 1980s and '90s has continued to emphasize complex mechanical rhythms, often in a less densely chromatic idiom (he tends to favor displaced major and minor triads and polymodal structures). Particularly significant are the Études pour le piano (Book I, 1985; Book II, 1988-94; Book III 1995-2001), which draw from such diverse sources as gamelan, African polyrhythms, Bartók, Conlon Nancarrow, and Bill Evans. Other notable works in this vein include the Horn Trio (1982), the Piano Concerto (1985-88), the Violin Concero (1992), and the a cappella Nonsense Madrigals (1993).

Related Topics:
1970s - Continuum - Steve Reich - Terry Riley - African music - Pygmies - Chromatic - Major - Minor triad - Modal - Études pour le piano - Gamelan - Polyrhythm - Conlon Nancarrow - Bill Evans

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Ligeti's most recent work is the Hamburg Concerto for horn and chamber orchestra (1998-99, revised 2003).

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